When is a $20 bill worth $396,000? January 2021.
In 1996, someone at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing (BEP) facility in Fort Worth, Texas, must have been snacking on a banana while working. The $20 bills they were printing go through three different stages of inking, and somewhere between the second and third stage, a banana sticker fell onto a bill. The third stage of printing was printed over the produce sticker. This left a very rare mint error, called a retained obstruction printing error. It came to be known as the Del Monte note.
A student noticed the sticker in 2003 and sold the bill for $10,000. It went up for auction in 2006 and drew $25,000. Heritage Auctions sold the Del Monte note again in January of 2021, expecting to get $25,000 to $50,000 for it. The bidding went up to $396,000, setting a world record for an error note. That is one really expensive banana sticker! -via Kottke
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wait so are we living in a Banana Republic?
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Well, someone found it appealing.
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and people say NFTs are crazy! (I agree with them, but still, there are financial things happening that most people don't understand... laundering? something like that)
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